• I don't know. I don't know what it is to be without it, so I don't know how it would feel to a 'normal', non-gender dysphoric person.

I guess if I could sum it up - it would be like being born in a small prison cell and not knowing if there's a way out and feeling stuck there for life. You feel trapped and even everyday ordinary things you do inside the cell feel like you're dragging chains around while doing them. And people see you, but the walls around you are invisible, so they can't see you're trapped and so you just seem really weird to them.

Basically, the main thought present in your head at all times is that you just want out and you see your life passing by and the grains of your time slipping right through your fingers. People are living. You watch them living and you want to run after them and catch up and live too. You just want to smash every clock you see and say 'wait. stop going! let me out. i want to live too. please don't run out of time before i get to live too.'

that's some of what I feel anyway.

When I look at my chest I feel shame and impurity and a looming sense of wrong-ness. I feel like I have two alien parasites stuck to my chest, sucking away my confidence.

As somebody stuck in an anorexia to BED cycle (each "phase" lasting on average 1.5 years) I feel that my mentality under each disorder is hugely different. I never experienced the floods of guilt and shame that come with a binge when I was anorexic, even when I overate. It was more of an annoyed, uncomfortable feeling of my rituals being disturbed, something that was out of line and I never felt that my control was truly threatened.

My anorexia to BED transition always tends to follow stressful/traumatic life events so the bingeing behaviour kicks in really rapidly and there's little grey area for me. BED to anorexia is a bit more insidious and actually comes on when my depression lifts a bit.

So to cut to the chase, I personally feel that there is a pretty clear distinction between these anorexic "binges" and BED binges. I really don't mean it critically, any suffering is awful enough.